Resilient networked multiagent systems: A distributed adaptive control approachy

Control algorithms of networked multiagent systems are generally computed distributively without having a centralized entity monitoring the activity of agents; and therefore, adverse events such as attacks to the communication network and/or failure of agent-wise components can easily result in system instability and prohibit the accomplishment of system-level objectives. This paper studies resilient coordination of networked multiagent systems in the presence of misbehaving agents, i.e., agents that are subject to such adverse events. In particular, we consider a class of adverse conditions consisting of exogenous disturbances and interagent uncertainties, and present a distributed adaptive control architecture to retrieve the nominal networked multiagent system behavior. Departing from the existing relevant literature that make specific assumptions on the graph topology and/or the fraction of misbehaving agents, we show that the considered class of adverse conditions can be mitigated through a new adaptive control methodology that utilizes a local state emulator - even if all agents are misbehaving. A illustrative numerical example is provided to demonstrate the theoretical findings.